Of all the things on last night I only made it to two out of five. I missed out on the opening of Ryoji Ikeda’s exhibition at Ikon Eastside (which I might go and catch at lunchtime today), Jordan McKenzie’s ‘Day Into Night’ at Vivid and Colour’s night at The Victoria featuring World of Fox’s album launch.
Still, I did make it along to the Arts & Business Awards. The special guest was Patrick Stewart (who walked, not teleported on stage – disappointing) and the winners were:
Community Award – EC-Arts & National Express Coach
Cultural Branding Award – Stan’s Cafe & AE Harris (Birmingham) Ltd
Museum, Libraries and Archives Award – Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust & Inchscape Motors Shrewsbury
People Development Award – Holte Visual & Performing Arts College, St Francis Primary School & Signet Trading Ltd
Sustained Partnership Award – Sinfonia ViVA & Rolls Royce plc
Young People Award – County Youth Arts & Balfour Beatty Capital
Business Volunteer of the Year Award – Colin Wells from Prologic plc & Multistory (also winner of the Champion of Champions Award)
Congrats to all of them.
After that I wandered down to the Sunflower Lounge for Gallery of Owl’s ‘All You Can Eat Zine’ which was fantastic – billed as ‘a night of Zines, comics, small press, music and performance’. It provided all of that as well as a palpable sense of
I didn’t stay for that long, but long enough to catch Richard Peel‘s entertaining performance of Dracula, have a chat with Claire from ATTA grrl a buy a couple of zines (ATTA grrl and Girls Who Draw, since you asked). There was a good turnout, a great atmosphere and the excitement of knowing there’s loads of interesting stuff going on around the city.
Here’s what I picked up:
And check out the hand stamp too – easily the best one I’ve had in a while:
Oxjam Brum is taking over a bunch of Birmingham pubs/bars on Saturday 24 October for a fundraising, musical extravaganza:
Showcasing the very best of local, grassroots music whilst embracing national upcoming talent this will encompass over thirty acts, over six venues and all for one ticket which will be exchanged for a wristband on the day
The venues involved are The Flapper, The Prince of Wales, Basement Bar, The Victoria, Island Bar and the Sunflower Lounge. Here’s the list of bands.
The point of it all is to help raise awareness for Oxfam’s work on climate change. Tickets are only £6.
The Fringe
That’s the main event covered. Hit the link for the range of fringe events happening in the run-up.
Being the editor of CiB comes with certain privileges, one of them being the opportunity to give your other projects a cheeky plug.
As you may know I co-run Colour live music events, and we are putting on our first ever Birmingham gig at The Victoria next Tuesday.
The evening will feature music from 3 live acts, projected vintage slides, free homemade cakes and us pretending we can DJ. If you do come along please come and say hi.
We are also really chuffed this month as we will co-hosting the closedown party of Flatpack Festival this year.
‘Codswallop’ by The Brothers McLeod has been nominated for a BAFTA in the category of Short Animation, pitching them against Aadrman’s Christmas TV big-hitter ‘Wallace and Gromit: A Matter of of Loaf and Death’.
Codswallop is based on a series of postcards Greg McLeod sent to his son, and it’s similar in atmosphere to their Spamland shorts. Some nice mucking about with splitscreen and stereo sound too, so we’ll have to make sure we don’t get our left and right mixed up.
I’m doing this wrong, I know I am. What I should do is go to the places I’m about to mention, ‘experience the art’, get trollied and turn this into some gonzo jounalism effort.
Sigh.
Anyway, there are a few pubs in Birmingham that are pushing the arty side of things – two in Hockley that have been about for a bit (but not all that long) and a new pretender the other side of town.
The Lord Clifden touts itself as Birmingham’s ‘urban art bar’ and makes a fair claim on the title by having work by Banksy, D*Face, Nick Walker, Blek, Obey, Faile and Army Lion knocking about. It’s at 34 Great Hampton Street, Hockley (map).
The Urban Art Bar people also own The Red Lion at 95 Warstone Lane, Hockley (map) which seems to follow the same formula and only opened a month ago (I think). There’s info and a few reviews on the beerintheevening.com page.
The Victoria (website soon come) is the new one – it only opened last Thursday. The pub’s been around for a while but has now been taken over by the people who own Island Bar. The pub now boasts a Birmingham cityscape mural made by the Them Lot collective which is based on the computer game Rampage.
It’s round the back of the Alexandra Theatre at 48 John Bright Street (map) and promises DJs, bands and burlesque shows. It was also the venue for Dr Sketchy’s Anti-Art School the other day (and will be again on 17 Jan).
